


Debts

by athousandvictories



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: (Vaguely) Penitential Sex, Canon Compliant, F/M, Strip Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandvictories/pseuds/athousandvictories
Summary: Her heart jumps when she sees him in her chair, his shirt already unlaced. (Shedoes not jump. Contessina is many things, but she is not jumpy.)A post-wedding coda, in which Cosimo pays what he owes.
Relationships: Contessina de' Bardi/Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	Debts

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: references Contessina's loss of virginity being unpleasant. (Let's be real: IT WAS)

The knock at her door startles Contessina into knocking a candle off the table. She twists off her chair to rescue it, but the wick has been sadly mashed, and there is a charred spot on the carpet. It shouldn't matter, really; she is rich now, and there will be another carpet if she asks for it. 

“Enter!" she says, frowning down at the smoking fabric.

She expects Emilia or another of the maids, come to stoke her fire or put away the wine. Instead it is Cosimo that enters. There is road dust on his boots, and his hair is a sweat-damp tangle on his shoulders.

“My Lord.” Her heart is pounding; she feels like a trapped rabbit crouched on the floor. “I didn’t know you were back.” 

She stands to set the candle back down on the desk (safely away from the edge) and moves in front of it, smoothing her rumpled skirts. The position is strategic but useless, since Cosimo could hardly have missed seeing the open volume behind her. It is conspicuous in a crowd of delicate cosmetics containers and little jewelry boxes.

“You can read,” is all that he says, still standing in the threshold. 

“I hoped you wouldn’t mind.” 

He must know this is a lie. An illuminated manuscript was too auspicious a possession to have gone unnoticed in her humble trousseau (mostly gowns and veils, and shoes). She had hidden it. 

“No. I don’t mind.” 

He says it quietly, and there is something about his bearing that makes her hope he'll ask where she’d gotten it, or even reach out to touch her hair. She holds herself still, waiting, but there is only a stiff silence.

He clears his throat. “I have--I have come only to tell you I am safely returned from Rome.” 

She does not let even a flicker of her disappointment reach her face. It is a kindness that he came, even if he won’t stay. The servants already talk about the noblewoman so artless her husband won’t sleep with her.

Perhaps he knows it. Why else would he have come, when he is obviously exhausted.

“Thank you, Cosimo.” 

He dips his head in a half-nod and closes the door. 

Contessina looks at it with narrow eyes for a half-minute after his footsteps are inaudible. He has done her a favour, and she is partial to having the upper hand where favours are concerned.

Two nights later, he knocks again. She is reading--in bed, though the sheet of sky that floats in her west-facing window is still a fraught pink, and no one has come to help her unlace her gown. 

“My Lord.” She sits up straight in her nest of heavy skirts. “I hadn’t expected you so early in the evening.”

“I’m just here for my cloak.” He frowns; perhaps hearing the unsaid ending of the statement: _and not for you_. “I--”

“The red one?” She rescues him, because she is benevolent. “I had it sent to your rooms after you left.”

He frowns into the empty wardrobe. “You’re sure?” 

She raises her eyebrows at him instead of answering.

“Yes, of course. A servant must have misplaced it.” 

“It was Paulo I sent. I’ll have Emilia ask him, she’ll be here in a moment to undress me. And she’ll bring you the other from the laundry first.”

He nods vaguely and closes the wardrobe doors. 

“Where are you going?” That had been too demanding. “If you will pardon my asking.”

“An errand.” That is not descriptive, and he is tense. She wonders what his father needs that is so urgent it must be done at sunset.

“You must take Lorenzo’s horse.” The words come out before she can stop them, again, too demanding. “That is, your usual horse is favouring his front foot again. The head groom mentioned it to me in passing.”

His brows lift. He is surprised; well, she is not. For all men talk of helpmates, they are poor at accepting help. "Emilia will tell the stable boy to saddle it for you, since it is on her way to the laundry."

She holds his gaze steadily while he studies her. He is, she hopes, re-evaluating. He is certainly indebted.

“Thank you, Contessina.” 

She feels something that that is much like triumph.

She has only one day to revel in her victory. The next morning, Paulo brings her a manuscript far larger than her little psalter, and even more elaborately illustrated. The outermost page says _Historíai̯_ in red lettering. It is near to priceless. 

Contessina is furious.

He is waiting in her rooms the next day. Her heart jumps when she sees him in her chair in the corner, his shirt already unlaced. ( _She_ does not jump. Contessina is many things, but she is not jumpy.) She makes up her mind to ascertain, soon, and without asking outright, why he is here. It will settle her.

Not that she is unsettled. She would not give him the privilege of influencing her serenity.

“Contessina.” He says her name carefully still, like he is not used to how it feels in his mouth. It is no clearer whether he means to take her to bed, and it is the uncertainty that is to blame for the flush rising in her face.

There is a green glass decanter at the desk, and she fills a cup of wine from it, watching him watch her. His gaze is heavy, but not strictly lustful. She pours a second, and holds it out between them. His hand brushes hers when he reaches out to take it, and he looks at her solemnly from under his eyelashes.

He will sleep with her, then. Almost certainly. She has not seen him look so martyred for any other occasion.

She drinks her own wine standing (in the mirror, her cheeks are bright). _Christ’s wounds, Contessina. He is your husband. Gather yourself._

“Thank you for sending me the _Historiai_ ,” she says.

“Do you like Herodotus, then?” 

She does not say that it had moved her to tears, holding the lives of men hundreds of years dead in her hands. He asks to be polite, and not to hear her answer. She says, “Yes. I fear I will not be able to return such a favour in kind.”

“It was a gift.”

“I think it was not. You meant to repay me for my help with your errand.” She turns away from the mirror to look at him. “You are not the sort of person to leave debts unpaid.”

“And yet I am in your debt.”

His eyes are flame-blue, and burning. He swallows. 

“I have been thoughtless of you, Contessina.” He looks down into his wine, and then back up at her. The hearth is behind her; she shivers as if it were cold.

“When I took you to bed--”

“You did not hurt me.” It is mostly true. She had heard women talk about their wedding nights, and she had expected some pain. Cosimo had begun slowly, and she had only felt a little, though he must have judged her feelings by the tension of her thighs under his hands. He had not met her eyes once. He cannot meet them now.

“I was inconsiderate. I am sorry.”

She turns to speak to her reflection. “I do not know you very well, but I know already that you are not a man who can pretend. I do not hold it against you.”

“We all must do our duty.” His eyes are distant, looking at the spectre of his lover from Rome, or perhaps only his memorized ledgers. 

Without the weight of his attention, it is easier to be pragmatic. “I see,” she says, with a little lift of her brows, and reaches behind her to untie her dress. She can get out of the sleeves herself, but it catches on her waist, held by Emilia’s impeccable lacing. Nevermind, the hairpins must come out too, and they are more obliging.

“Duty is a fine sentiment when it pertains to wars and hardships. Perhaps not quite the thing, when bedding one’s wife.”

She glances at him over her shoulder. He is staring. The hearth is behind her she realizes; the firelight making her shift half-transparent.

Cosimo stands, and in two strides he is right behind her, his hands pressed in the narrow space underneath her breasts and above her waist. 

“You are right.” She stares at him in the mirror as he drops his mouth to her ear. His voice is very low. “Let me pay my debts.” 

His hands are hot against her ribs even through the layer of linen. She lifts her chin and forces herself to breathe evenly. It is unconscionable to give him the idea that he is able to discompose her.

To loosen the rest of her laces he must take his hands away, and then she can get her breath back. He is quick at it, his fingers brisk and ungentle. He drops the dress carelessly on the floor, and she whirls to face him, intending to regain the upper hand.

He catches her face in his palms before she can manage it, and kisses her.

Only Ezio had ever kissed her, and he had done it chastely in comparison. Cosimo is rough, and it is difficult to remain in control of the situation. She is forced to bite his bottom lip to do it. His hands clamp down hard around her waist, and then he pulls her back two stumbling steps over him and onto the bed.

He is on her hair; she winces, he curses under his breath, and both of them fumble to extract it. Then she is balanced over him on her wrists, his mouth inches from hers. (He is winded, possibly because she had just elbowed him in the stomach.)

“Damn your hair,” he says again, and winds his hand in it, bending his knee between her legs to hold her up with his thigh. She looks into his lust-dark eyes and finds that having the upper hand is no longer a pressing concern. 

The kisses that follow are filthy. She is peripherally aware that they should horrify her, but there is a hot haze of lust over her intellect, and Cosimo’s thigh under it. His hands are half-touching her thighs, at the hem of her shift, and even that is not indecent enough. She bites his lower lip again, and he hikes the shift up to her waist to spread his hands across her bare hips.

There is a shuddering second when she thinks it is possible she will faint, and it is vaguely perceptible to her now, why sex is said to feel a little like dying. 

Because he is a man, and hateful, it is then that he sets her back down. She bends to kiss him, and he evades it. “Patience is a virtue,” he says against her ear, his hand firm against the back of her neck (she considers slapping him). 

Then he grips her waist, as if he could lift her. 

“Let me up, Contessina.” 

She does, resentfully, and he lies beside her, collecting himself, for several breaths. He kisses her on the temple (a jarringly gentle gesture) and then is on his feet, padding across the room to the desk. He brings back a cup of wine for her (and a second one, balanced in his left hand). It might have been thoughtful, if he had liked her, but she is sure that it is a more practical measure. _We all must do our duty._ Very well.

She finishes it quickly, sitting across from him on the brocade coverlet, and then leans over the edge to put the cup on the floor. When she rises, he is stretched out sideways across the bed, arms above his head. His throat is bared to the ceiling, and she wants suddenly to bite it--would he make a sound, if she hurt him? 

“Do you play draughts?”

It is an odd question to be asked in bed. “Badly.”

“That will do.”

He is on his feet again, and digging in a cabinet. It irks her to watch--it is _her_ cabinet, though he is her husband, and owns all her things. (He had owned most of them even before they were married, since her only possessions were dresses and one book.)

He throws a draughts board down between them on the bed, and a little bag with it, full of the painted wooden pieces. He drinks directly from the decanter as he places them on their squares, draped lazily across the bed like a cat.

When there is just a little left he hands the wine across to her, and she drinks it in a single swallow. “White is mine.” 

He looks at her oddly, and then drops his eyes back down to the board. Had she shocked him with her brazen manners, or was it only that she was wearing so little? She had forgotten to be embarrassed. Likely all the wine is to thank. 

“Make me a wager.”

“Of what?” She sets the decanter on the floor, careful not to disturb the board.

“I’ll wager you my shirt for the first two pieces.”

 _Curses._ Her hairpins are already out, scattered over the desk.

“My silver ring.”

He nods, and moves his first piece.

Contessina loses her silver ring, her wedding ring, and her emerald ring immediately; Cosimo watches her lean over to put them on the floor with something like hunger in his eyes. She would leap at him (game be damned), except that he is still wearing all his clothes, and that she is very fond of winning. She gets one of his pieces on her next turn, and considers demanding he take the shirt half-off. It would have made her seem ungracious, so she only glares at him, and bets her right stocking.

He takes two of her pieces in one move. She realizes that the single piece had almost certainly been a sacrifice to enable this very strategy, and feels a fury akin to bloodlust. He is looking at her innocently.

"Since you are fond of taking my things, take it yourself." (This is _certainly_ ungracious, but she has run out of patience.)

Cosimo peels the stocking down to her ankle with his same, serious expression, and then looks at her with raised brows. She has to lean back on her elbows to lift her foot. His hand lingers on her ankle a moment too long, and she thinks perhaps she has broken him.

"Now?"

“I wager my shift,” she says, with her left stocking still on, and looks him directly in the eye.

Wooden coins clatter on the floor as he sweeps them aside and she kicks the board off after them before he is on her, pressing her down into the bed with his hands wrapped firmly around her ribcage. It is difficult to get her out of the shift; she has to lift her hips while he tugs it up from her thighs to her back, and then wriggle out of the rest of it.

He throws it across the room vengefully when they finally succeed.

“Why are you glaring at me, Contessina?” His mouth is warm rough against her sternum. He sets a palm between her hipbones and kisses a line down to her stomach; the familiar delirium returns to her in a rush.

“Because you are tease and a cheat,” she says breathlessly into the ceiling. “Christ!” 

Cosimo takes his mouth off her breast and looks at her with something glittering in his eyes. She is tempted again to slap him. Instead, she glares until he drops his head again, and then secures it with a hand in his hair. When he bites her just under her collarbone she has to cover her hand with her mouth to stop from shouting.

She is writhing, bereft of dignity, and with dark bruises on her left hipbone and right shoulder when he finally takes off his shirt. She runs her hands over his bare shoulders while he fumbles his breeches off his hips, and this time she is ready and unafraid, hands braced on his shoulder blades. He moves slowly, and after a minute of various experiments, she has discovered the art of rolling her hips up to meet him at the end of each thrust. In another minute she has perfected it; Cosimo says, “Contessina,” in a strangled tone, and throws her leg over his shoulder. 

After this, he moves much faster, and less steadily. It is impossible not to be smug when he is forced to stop entirely, taking shaky breaths with his damp brow pressed against her collarbone.

She grins at the canopy, and presses her heel into the small of his back (she is not above gloating). She thinks he laughs against her skin.

When he starts to move again he has his mouth on her breast, and her spine arches of its own accord. In another second the orgasm hits her, and she is only half-aware of Cosimo’s hips stuttering into hers as he follows her over the edge.

She watches her surroundings come slowly back into focus with a calm fascination. Catching her breath is difficult, but pleasantly, and she realizes with a sort of faraway interest that her thighs are still trembling.

“How do you feel?” Cosimo rumbles into her shoulder. He does not look at all martyred. He looks tired.

“Since you pay debts so well,” she says, “I am tempted to usury.”

In truth, the debt is more than paid the next morning. When Lorenzo thinks she is too far away to hear, he tells Cosimo under his breath that he must have slept very well _indeed._

“I only say so,” he whispers, “because there is a stripe of vermilion lip-paint from your ear to your collar. Also, I heard that you managed to break a draughts board."

He claps Cosimo hard on the shoulder, and Contessina nearly chokes on her wine.

**Author's Note:**

> This is substanceless trash borne of my rage. My rage is borne of Cosimo being canonically godawful at sex. Give your wife an orgasm, you insufferable prick. This is OOC for certain, because I'm sure he treated her like trash for at least months but I didn't have time to write a slow burn. Maybe later.
> 
> And listen, I did my research. I'm 90% sure they had a) Herodotus b) (strip) checkers, and c) lipstick in 15th century Italy. But I could be wrong, so apologies to any medievalists. Tell me my failings, I want to know. 
> 
> For arthurian aesthetics and the highest quality heresies, find me on [tumblr](https://athousandvictories.tumblr.com/)


End file.
